So, the hallowed halls of higher learning are ringing with the sound of… well, not much original thought, apparently. Some rag called The Guardian – probably written by AI itself these days, for all I know – coughs up a story: “Thousands of UK university students caught cheating using AI.” My first thought, as I try to light a cigarette with a shaking hand and yesterday’s bourbon still clinging to my tonsils, is: “Thousands caught?” Christ, that’s like saying thousands of rats have been seen in the New York subway. The real number, the one that crawls in the dark, is always magnitudes higher. Always.
They’re throwing around figures like confetti at a doomed wedding. Almost 7,000 “proven cases” in 2023-24. That’s 5.1 per 1,000 students. Up from 1.6 the year before. And they reckon it’s heading for 7.5. “Proven cases.” That’s a good one. Proven by who? Some overpaid administrator who still thinks a floppy disk is cutting edge? These “experts” – and you know how I feel about experts, they’re usually the ones who tell you it can’t rain right before a fucking deluge – say this is just the “tip of the iceberg.” No shit, fellas. You needed a PhD for that, did you? I could’ve told you that from the bottom of a whiskey glass, and it would’ve cost you less.
The universities, bless their tweed-covered hearts, are facing a “rapidly evolving challenge.” You don’t say. It’s like watching a sloth try to dodge a cheetah. They’re trying to “adapt assessment methods.” I can just picture the emergency faculty meetings, stale biscuits and lukewarm coffee, everyone stroking their chins and looking thoughtful while the bots are rewriting their entire curriculum overnight. Traditional plagiarism, the good old-fashioned crime of nicking someone else’s equally shitty work, is down. Of course it is. Why copy from little Timmy in your dorm when you can get a goddamn machine to spin you a golden turd of an essay in ten seconds flat? It’s efficiency, folks. The kind of efficiency that makes you want to drink drain cleaner.
And get this, more than a quarter of these esteemed institutions didn’t even bother to record AI misuse as a separate category last year. They’re still getting to grips with it. Still trying to define what a robot is, probably. Meanwhile, the students are already cyborgs, outsourcing their brains to the cloud. One survey found 88% of students used AI for assessments. Eighty-eight percent! And some university, bless their cotton socks, tested their own systems and found AI-generated crap slipped through undetected 94% of the time. Ninety-four! So much for those “proven cases.” The real score is AI: 94, Academia: 6, and Academia’s points are probably a clerical error.
This Dr. Peter Scarfe character, an “associate professor of psychology” – there’s a field that’s going to have a goddamn field day with this new breed of human – says it’s “near impossible to prove” AI cheating. He also mumbles something about “not wanting to falsely accuse students.” Translation: too much paperwork, too many angry calls from Mommy and Daddy who paid a fortune for little Tarquin to get a degree in Pretending to Be Smart. He admits it’s unfeasible to make every assessment in-person. Of course it is. That would mean actual work for the ivory tower crowd. Can’t have that. Better to just let the digital tide wash over everything.
The kids, naturally, are lapping it up. TikTok, that bastion of intellectual rigor, is full of videos showing them how to “humanise” AI text. “Humanise.” That’s a laugh riot. Like teaching a parrot to say “I love you” and believing it. What does it even mean to be human anymore if a string of code can fake it well enough to fool a professor? Maybe these AI tools are more human than the professors. They’re certainly better at bullshitting.
Then you get the student testimonials. “Harvey,” who’s just finished his “business management degree” – a qualification that already sounds like it was invented by an AI with a sick sense of humor – says he used AI for “ideas and structure.” Yeah, Harvey, like I use the racetrack for “financial planning.” He says most people he knows use it. I bet they do. “Anything that I would take from it, I would then rework completely in my own ways.” Sure, Harvey. You and Michelangelo. You just needed a little digital angel to whisper the Sistine Chapel into your ear first.
And “Amelia,” doing a “music business degree” – another one that screams “future unemployment” – says it’s good for brainstorming and summarising. She even pulls the sympathy card: “One of my friends uses it… She has dyslexia.” Oh, well, that makes it all okay then. If it helps one person with a genuine difficulty, then let the other ninety-nine percent turn their brains into tapioca pudding. Some government clown even chimed in saying AI should “level up” opportunities for dyslexic kids. “Level up.” We’re living in a goddamn video game, and nobody knows where the off switch is. I need a drink. Or maybe just another cigarette. Hell, why not both?
The tech companies, those benevolent overlords of our digital cages, are targeting students, offering free upgrades and discounts. Get ‘em hooked young. First taste is always cheap. They’re not selling software; they’re selling dependence. Selling the idea that you don’t need to think, you just need to prompt.
This other “expert,” Dr. Thomas Lancaster – they’re crawling out of the woodwork now, smelling blood in the water or maybe just tenure – says, “My hope is that students are still learning through this process.” Learning what, Tom? How to be a ventriloquist for a machine? How to outsource the one thing that’s supposed to make us human – our ability to string a few goddamn thoughts together, however flawed? He also says university assessment can “seem pointless to students.” Seem? Brother, a lot of it is pointless. Always has been. A game of memorizing bullshit to get a piece of paper that says you’re qualified to memorize more bullshit in some office cubicle until you die.
His solution? Focus on “skills that can’t easily be replaced by AI, such as communication skills, people skills.” Groundbreaking. You mean we should teach people how to talk to each other? How to be actual human beings? What a fucking revelation. You learn communication skills by arguing with a bartender at 3 AM, by trying to talk a woman into your bed, by getting your teeth kicked in and having to explain it to your landlord. Not by having a chatbot write your term paper on the ethics of AI. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast. If you still knew how to make toast without asking Google.
The government, of course, is “investing more than £187m in national skills programmes.” Throwing money at the fire. They’ll probably fund a new AI to teach “critical thinking,” which will then be used by students to more critically assess how to cheat using AI. It’s a beautiful, pointless circle jerk, and we’re all just spinning in it.
What’s the endgame here? A generation that can’t write, can’t think, can’t do anything without an algorithm holding its hand? We’re breeding a world of beautifully polished emptiness. They’ll have degrees in “AI-Assisted Idea Generation” and “Advanced Prompt Engineering for Dummies.” And they’ll all be wondering why they feel so goddamn hollow inside. Because the machine can write your essay, but it can’t feel your pain. It can’t taste your whiskey. It can’t look at a blank page with that mix of terror and excitement that means you’re about to create something, something yours, however fucked up and imperfect.
They talk about “humanising” AI. Maybe we should be more worried about the AI-ifying of humans. We’re so keen to hand over the messy, difficult bits of being alive, the thinking, the struggling, the failing, that we’re forgetting how to do it ourselves. And the kicker? The machines are just reflecting our own laziness, our own desire for the easy way out.
So, yeah, the kids are cheating. The system’s a joke. The professors are outmatched. The robots are winning. Pour me another. And make it a double. This whole goddamn spectacle is enough to drive a man to… well, to exactly where I am now, I suppose. At least my hangover is authentically mine. Nobody programmed this headache.
Chinaski out. Probably for another smoke. Or maybe I’ll just stare at the wall and try to remember what my own thoughts sound like.
Source: Revealed: Thousands of UK university students caught cheating using AI